“Oh, I know,” Ariel said. “I just don’t know if I feel like going all the way out there, but it’s all right. I’m going, aren’t I?”
“It’s just a bus ride and a walk.”
“And a bus ride back.”
“Right. Maybe we’ll see his kids. Greta and Debbie.”
“That’ll be a thrill. Which was the one you talked to?”
“Greta. She’s the older one.”
“Right, and you told her you were Graham. You can show her your spleen.”
“You always tell me I’m gross, Jardell.”
“Well, look who taught me. Maybe she’ll be cute and you can make out with her.”
“She’s all of nine years old, remember?”
“Well, tell her you’re Graham and you can pretend she’s Veronica.”
“You must have taken a weird pill today, Jardell.”
On the bus, he said, “Speaking of Veronica, she wasn’t in school today.”
“So?”
“I wonder what’s wrong with her.”
“The poor little thing probably has the sniffles.”
“Maybe.”
“Of course if you want to send her a get-well card, go right ahead. What’s the big deal that she stayed home from school today?”
He shrugged. “Just that I was thinking,” he said. “That conversation we had, and then Graham got hit by a car and now Veronica stayed home from school.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I suppose not.”
She thought of a candle stub centered beneath a portrait — but that was crazy. She hadn’t done anything. She hadn’t even thought of Veronica in days.
“Graham got hit by a car,” she said.
“I know.”
“And Veronica probably has a cold or a stomach ache. Or maybe she just stayed home to go someplace with her mother.”
“Maybe.”
“Talk about me being weird today, Mr. Erskine Wold. You could make money giving weird lessons.”
Investigation is a simpler process when you know what you’re investigating. If Jeff had had the benefit of David’s conversation with Etta Jellin, he’d have been looking for material on Grace Molineaux from the start. Instead he had to spend several hours in the newspaper files, scanning endless yellowed issues of last century’s newspapers for anything he could find relating to various occupants of the brick house on Legare Street. He came on the stories of several persons who had died in the house and made copious notes on each, having no way of knowing whether or not he’d found what he was looking for.
When he hit Grace Molineaux, he knew he was home.
The story was much as Etta Jellin remembered it, with a few exceptions. Grace Duprée Molineaux’s four children, three boys and a girl ranging in age from four months to five years, all died within a three-week period in September of 1882. The youngest, a boy, was the first to go, dying in his sleep on the night of the fifth. The girl, a three-year-old, died six days later, and her eighteen-month-old brother perished the same night. The oldest boy failed to wake up on the morning of the twentieth.
The newspaper coverage was guarded. The first death was unremarkable — infant mortality was high in those days. Jeff missed the initial story, a two-line squib on a back page. But when the boy and girl died in the same night, and only a week after the first death, the coincidence drew journalistic attention.
The fourth death was the clincher. Reading between the lines, Jeff could easily determine that public opinion suspected the Molineaux woman of smothering her children while they slept. Without suggesting as much, the anonymous author of one news story hastened to point to extenuating circumstances, showing that Grace was under a strain. She was a young woman who had married a man twenty years older than herself. Jacob Molineaux, a heavily-decorated hero of the Confederacy, had given her four children in as many years, only to be lost at sea weeks before the birth of his youngest son. Grace’s own father had died a matter of months earlier, and a favorite cousin had killed himself at about the same time in remorse over heavy gambling losses. All of these tragedies, cited ostensibly to show that the loss of her children was by no means the first blow Grace had suffered, served to imply that, if indeed she had murdered her children, she had done so out of stress-induced emotional instability.
Perhaps for lack of evidence, perhaps in deference to her family background and her husband’s war record, no charges were brought against Grace Molineaux. Her name disappeared abruptly from the newspapers, only to reappear just as abruptly on November 4th, when the newspaper reported her sudden death as a result of gas inhalation.
She had been found, it was reported, in the kitchen of her Legare Street home. While suicide was not mentioned, in keeping with the newspaper’s evident view of decorous journalism, the inference was inescapable.
She killed her kids, Jeff thought. Maybe the first one did die of crib death or some nineteenth-century infant malady. That was certainly possible, but somewhere along the line Grace had snapped, and she’d certainly murdered the other three children, and when she found she couldn’t live with herself she put her head in the oven and turned on the gas.
Could it be the same stove? The one Roberta cooked on, the one with the eccentric pilot lights? Was her restless ghost haunting the stove, leaving it only to appear in the upstairs bedroom with a baby in her arms? Lord, was this Jeff Channing, man of laws, thinking this way...?
His head was reeling by the time he left the newspaper offices. His nostrils were full of the musty smell of ancient newsprint. He’d been unable to find a photograph of Grace Molineaux, but he had no doubt that she was the woman whose portrait hung in Ariel’s room. He had no grounds for this belief. There was no evidence that Grace had ever had her portrait painted, or that her appearance had been anything like that of the woman in question. But he only had to remember the expression on that face, the look in those eyes, to be sure the likeness was that of Grace Molineaux, madwoman, murderess, and suicide. Good Lord...
He did not return to his office, did not even consider returning to his office, but walked instead to where he’d left his car, got into it and drove around. He passed the house on Legare Street three or four times, returning to it compulsively, staring at its brick-clad bulk as if it might reveal itself to him. Roberta’s car was parked at the curb, but he had no desire to stop for a word with her. He couldn’t tell her what he had learned. She was under a strain as it was, having a tough time emotionally and—
Just like Grace Molineaux, he thought.
And pushed the thought aside, and drove aimlessly around, trying to think if there was any further direction his investigations might take. Could he possibly establish whether the painting was of Grace? It occurred to him that there might be a way. Even if the painting was unsigned, a comparison of the style with that of various local portraitists of the time might establish who had painted it. Painters frequently kept records, and historical societies tended to preserve records of that sort. A little creative research might clear things up.
For that matter, a little further research in the newspaper files might be time well spent. He already knew as much as he wanted to know about Grace Molineaux, but it occurred to him to wonder what effect her house might have had on persons who had occupied it after her death. He already knew the house had changed hands at an unseemly rate. Had there been a disproportionate number of deaths? Was unexplained infant mortality a legacy of Grace’s?
Or had other people sensed something and moved away, before their lives were affected by whatever permeated the damp old walls? Maybe the house had been waiting all these years, waiting for the Jardells... A house waiting? The defense better rest...